Game of Patience PDF
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Paris, 1796. Aristide Ravel, freelance undercover police agent and investigator, is confronted with a double murder in a fashionable apartment. The victims prove to be Célie Montereau, the daughter of a wealthy and influential family, and the man who was blackmailing her.
Célie's enigmatic and bitter friend Rosalie Clément provides Aristide with intelligence that steers him toward Philippe Aubry, a young man with a violent past who had been in love with Célie. According to an eyewitness, however, Aubry could not have murdered Célie. As time passes, Aristide finds himself falling in love with Rosalie, albeit reluctantly, as he suspects that she knows more about the murders than she will say.
When Aristide uncovers evidence that points to Rosalie herself, he must learn whom she is protecting and why before he can obtain justice for Célie and save Rosalie from the guillotine. From the gritty back alleys of Paris to its glittering salons and cafés, through the heart of the feverish, decadent society of post-revolutionary France, Aristide's investigation leads him into a puzzle involving hidden secrets, crimes of passion, and long-nurtured hatreds.
With elaborate French cultural atmosphere, author Susanne Alleyn has created a sophisticated and stylish mystery set in the uneasy and turbulent years between the Terror and the rise of Napoleon.
"Police procedural fans and historical novel buffs, rejoice! Susanne Alleyn's fast-paced Game of Patience is an engrossing, richly detailed whodunit set in edgy, post-revolutionary Paris. From the opening guillotine scene to the wrenching why-dun-it denouement, I was riveted.""Susanne Alleyn's Game of Patience is a well-crafted historical mystery, authentic in every detail. Wonderfully entertaining."
---Sandra Gulland, author of The Josephine Bonaparte Collection
"Post-revolutionary Paris is the setting for this sophisticated and stylish novel, a true mystery, penned by Americna author Susanne Alleyn, who creates the atmosphere of those pre-Napoleonic days that challenges the skills of Caleb Carr of The Alienist fame."
---Big Sleep Books
After A Far Better Rest (2000), an homage to Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Alleyn returns to postrevolutionary Paris in her second novel, a taut police procedural. In the fall of 1796, police spy Aristide Ravel, who's haunted by fears that he has helped send dozens of innocent victims to the guillotine, and his employer, Commissaire Brasseur, investigate the slaying of Jean-Louis Saint-Ange, a property owner who lived on his rents, and Saint-Ange's ex-lover, Célie Montereau. Saint-Ange had apparently been extorting money from aristocratic families, and few, including his colorful porter, Grangier, mourn his demise. Despite qualms about "mistakenly being the cause of a man's death," Aristide dutifully interviews anxious former associates of Célie and her well-to-do parents in search of the truth. Full of authentic historical detail, ranging from the rise of General Bonaparte to the antics of flamboyant incroyables (cross-dressers), the story builds to an emotionally charged climax in which Aristide reveals painful secrets from his own past. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Alleyn brought revolutionary-era France to life vividly in her debut novel, A Far Better Rest (2000), a reimagining of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and she revisits the era in this mystery. Aristide Ravel, an associate of the police force, is called in when Louis Saint-Ange, a man of means but questionable repute, is found murdered alongside a young woman. At first Ravel and his associate, Commissaire Brasseur, focus on Saint-Ange, a blackmailer with dirt on many upper-class denizens, but when they identify the girl as Celie Montereau, a young woman from a wealthy family, they begin to dig into the girl's past only to discover she bore an illegitimate child and had a clandestine lover. Ravel and Brasseur track the young man, but even as the evidence mounts against him, Ravel fears he might be innocent and loathes the idea of convicting an innocent man in an climate that has already seen so much bloodshed. Grounded by a complex, haunted hero, the suspense in this layered mystery builds slowly but reaches a breakneck speed. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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